In the Hall of the Martian King (12 page)

He was still grinning, holding Cyx’s forearms with his; Cyx withdrew his right hand and turned his left over gently, then
yanked hard on Waynong’s forearm and jabbed hard with his right fist. The sucker shot flew directly into the young patrician’s
nose, sending him reeling backward, trailing blood from his nostrils, to lie supine on the floor of the conference room.

“Your Splendor is too kind,” Jak muttered, then added aloud, “I believe both delegations will want to regroup.”

“Agreed,” Witerio said. “Let us adjourn sine die. I’ll communicate with you privately about when we’ll resume talks.” As the
two of them shook hands for the camera, the King murmured, through clenched teeth, “Don’t expect my call anytime soon.”

Clarbo and Cyx had been toktru toves, and neither of them was the sort to hold a grudge (or any other idea) for very long.
Gradually they were making it up; Xlini dedicated herself to the task of getting the problem explained to Cyx, trying to help
him see that Clarbo had not intended any of the grave insults he had spouted, and that the two of them could settle the whole
matter in no time, stressing how much it would impress the King. “Cyx is perfectly representative of his class,” she said
at lunch with Dujuv and Jak. “A big kid with a small army. We’ll get him around. How’s it coming with Clarbo?”

Jak shrugged. “The person who’s really having an effect is Pikia. I have to say that for someone I was ordered to bring along
and keep out of trouble, she’s been worth her mass in plutonium. And about as dangerous if she got mad, I think.”

“My boss always gives me the loveliest compliments,” Pikia said, coming up behind them. “May I join you in this dining room?
My eyes are getting tired from all the batting and I need people who will give me sympathy if I decide to scream.”

Dujuv reached for the button; a chair rose out of the floor. “Of course you’re welcome, Pikia, join us and tell us all about
it, and don’t leave out a single ghastly detail.”

“I ought to take you up on that and repeat everything that man has said to me while I sat and looked adoring,” Pikia said.
She plopped down, grabbed a burrito from the platter, and tore into it. “Armph murph.”

“ ‘Armph murph’ indeed,” Xlini said. “Eat, then talk. We’ll hang around. None of us has anything urgent to do.”

While Pikia wolfed the sandwich, two bowls of noodles with scallops, a large orange-and-spinach salad, and half a pot of tea,
Dujuv had three desserts to keep her company. Jak and Xlini watched the race between the panth and the unmodified teenage
appetite with awe.

“What’s silly about Cyx and Clarbo,” Xlini said, “is that they’re toves. They like each other. The deal would already be done
if they didn’t fuss so about honor. If Clarbo would just act impressed about Cyx being a prince, or if Cyx would just act
impressed with Clarbo’s brilliance … how’s the King taking it all?”

“The King and I see a lot of each other, but we don’t talk much. Mostly we play Maniples,” Jak said. “At least he’s really
good and it’s not difficult for me to lose.” Jak had been the PSA’s school champion, setting several records, and in his senior
year he had attained the rank of Master. “The King doesn’t have the time to practice as much as he would need to, but he could
easily be a Master.”

“About the same way that you could be a Great Master if you did nothing but play Maniples?” Dujuv asked, between bites of
papaya puff pastry. He seemed to be winding down, while Pikia was still going, but then he’d had a head start.

“About like that,” Jak said. “Not like you and slamball.”

“Ubrade slabble?” That was all that escaped of “You played slamball?” through Pikia’s salad.

“When you get to the PSA (and I think you will, Pikia, you belong there, and if the Admissions Committee has two brain cells
to rub together they’ll find a way to get you in),” Jak said, “anyway, when you get to the PSA, check out the athletic trophy
case in the Hall of Honors and count off how many times you see Dujuv’s name next to a record or an award. He could’ve turned
pro.”

Dujuv shrugged. “Still could. And if I were a second-stringer on a minor league team, I’d be making twice what I make as a
Roving Consul. Then I consider the pleasures of spending a lot of time in the little capital towns of all these little nations,
trying to keep petty kings and minor republics from doing stupid things that get people killed, and I ask myself, ‘Is there
anything to that stereotype about panths being stupid?’ ”

Pikia swallowed the last of her salad and belched. “Excuse me. ‘Such a lady,’ as Great-great-grandpa Reeb would say. Weehu,
it’s a relief to eat without being constantly corrected.”

“Your great-great-grandfather does that?” Jak asked.

“Clarbo Waynong does. He tries to fix everything in the universe around him.” She belched again. “Oh, that’s better. Not the
belch, being able to do it.”

“Good, because the entertainment value is wearing thin,” Xlini said. “So how is the attempt to culturally sensitize him going?”

“Well, I listen. He tells me about what fine people his family are and how he’s expected to be promoted quickly to senior
agent and then be in the Assembly and in the Cabinet and be prime minister someday. I don’t think he realizes that any of
those jobs involve doing anything; he’s supposed to collect jobs the way scouts collect badges. And then everyone will love
him and think he’s a good boy. Because that’s what the universe is here for.

“As far as he understands things, he’s supposed to bring back Nakasen’s lifelog and be a hero for it and then everyone will
love him and his career will be back on track. And he doesn’t dak why people don’t understand their place in the script.

“He does grasp that Prince Cyx’s feelings are hurt, but I think he thinks that if they play golf together, or perhaps go out
and shoot a couple of animals, everything will be fine.

“I listen and smile and bat my eyes.

“As far as he grasps the world, you ask for what you want, and the world gives it to you, and that makes you a hero.”

“So,” Dujuv said, leaning back and gazing up at the ceiling, “at least the food’s good here, masen?”

Dujuv said, “Let me just point out that your old demmy has a gift for being a pain in the ass.”

Jak managed a sad chuckle. “When have we ever known her to be convenient about anything, masen?”

“There’s the Princess’s yacht,” Pikia said, pointing. The winged dot, like a distant hawk, cut a great swipe across the vibrant
blue sky.

“Hard to imagine that sky was ever red,” Jak said.

“If it still were,” Dujuv pointed out, “that yacht would drop like a rock. Pity it’s not.”

They were standing on the quai. Red Amber Magenta Green’s landing field chief had been ecstatic to have a visit from a Hive
warship followed by a royal party, within a week. The chief, and Clarbo Waynong, were probably the only people happy about
this, and Clarbo tended to be happy about everything.

The just-rising sun was dimmer and smaller than it was from the Hive and less sharp-edged than it was from Deimos. The huge-winged
launch finished its last circuit and started its descent to the landing field.

On the platform, the arrangement of people had been carefully worked out by protocol officers. Jak had to be there, as the
Hive’s ranking officer in the Splendor. Jak had insisted on having Dujuv, Shadow, and Pikia with him. Clarbo had insisted
on being as important as Pikia with a clear implication that he should have been as important as Dujuv.

Since it was a visit from the Crown Princess of a major nation, the King and the Prince both were there. Witerio was in full
outdoor regalia and looked as if he were going to a costume party as Barbarossa. Prince Cyx was as close to fashionable as
he dared. Jak specked this had to do with the many stillpix of Princess Shyf. He could have told Cyx that if Shyf was interested
in anyone besides Shyf, it was in Psim Cofinalez, the Duke of Uranium, not so much for the Duke himself as for the chance
to tip half the lower solar system into war.

“Stand here,” Jak said, not turning his head, but sensing that Clarbo Waynong had once again bounced out of the position dictated
by protocol and was on the brink of being somewhere offensive. Pikia towed the temporarily obedient Hive Intel agent back
into position. Jak reminded himself that when she finished gen school, he owed her a hell of a graduation present.

The Princess’s yacht, a large modern launch, came in straight and level, its vast wings flexing in the sticky thin air. They
curled under at the trailing edge, and the ship glided onto the linducer track. The wings scooped forward to lose speed, then
rolled in from the tips and slipped into the fuselage. The Princess’s yacht stopped before them like a dancer finishing a
difficult piece by simply dropping her arms.

The boarding ramp dropped from its side onto the quai. At Witerio’s nod, the band struck up a march.

The band had played through the march three times, Pikia had discreetly sheep-dogged Clarbo Waynong back into position two
times, and Witerio was beginning to tap his foot—not in time—when the Princess and her party emerged from the launch.

Pikia murmured, “Oh, weehu, Surrealist Safari.” Dujuv strangled a barely audible laugh.

Clearly Shyf thought of the Harmless Zone the way many people did, as a playground for the weird and a land of indulged fantasies,
inhabited by bizarre savages. Doubtless hoping to make an impression, she had arrived in something that looked very much like
a costume for “Memsahib at Amateur Strip Night.” Where there was fabric, the fabric was crisp, pressed, blindingly pure white,
and very starchy. Where there wasn’t fabric, which was often, black lace and bits of Shyf peeped out.

The costumes she had chosen for the Royal Palace Guardsmen around her were similar, though they covered more in most places,
and there didn’t seem to be any black lace under them. Jak and Dujuv had briefly served in the RPG, sometimes all too accurately
known as the Rutty Princess’s Gigolos. Ever-changing degrading uniforms had been part of the whole degrading experience, but
these
uniforms were truly something special, even for Shyf.

The Princess strode forward to bow to King Witerio, and delivered a prettily worded compliment about the five times that members
of their royal houses had officially met before. By carefully concentrating on the exact words, Jak figured out that this
had actually been three shopping trips to Green-world and two overland walking tours of the Harmless Zone that had happened
to pass through Red Amber Magenta Green, and that all five visits had been honeymoons, going back about three hundred years.
In Shyf’s phrasing, they sufficed to establish that the monarchs of Greenworld and of the Splendor were the most toktru of
toves and closest of cousins.

Jak’s heart hammered; perhaps her scent drifting this way, perhaps the mere sight of her.

After she finished flattering Witerio, and the band played a short march in honor of that, she had to spend nearly as long
greeting Prince Cyx. Witerio had been polite and correct; his son was just as correct but appeared to be thunderstruck.

When she had finished with the Splendor’s delegation, she squealed and threw herself into Jak’s arms. “Jak, so good to see
you again, Jak!” A good performance, even if Jak had seen many like it. His conditioning responded.

Over her shoulder, Jak could see his old tove Kawib Presgano, decked out in the full Royal Palace Guard Surrealist Safari
rig, barely controlling his rage. Kawib was much more thoroughly conditioned than Jak; his whole adult life had passed as
the Princess’s sex toy and object of torment.

Shyf’s hands trailed down the outside of Jak’s arms from shoulders to wrists, the backs of her nails brushing him through
his sleeves, to keep him painfully aware of the contact.

He wanted to kneel at her feet and pledge eternal obedience. He wanted to hit her in the face, straight from his shoulder
with everything he had. He wanted to shit his pants. He did none of these things.

She turned from him to Dujuv. “You handsome man, you haven’t changed at all.”

The panth, who she had more than once referred to as a “half-animal” and worse, smiled as if he liked her. “I can see you
haven’t changed.”

“And Shadow on the Frost.”

“Princess Shyf, you have long been the tove of my tove.” He bowed deeply and correctly. Jak envied the Rubahy his lack of
facial expression at that moment.

When she focused on Clarbo Waynong, Shyf’s eyes glinted and her delighted smile was so deep and real that Jak automatically
wondered how much she had rehearsed. “And
this
has to be a Waynong. Look at that chin and eyes.”

For the first time, Jak Jinnaka saw Clarbo Waynong impressed with something that was not Clarbo Waynong. He looked so bewildered
that perhaps this had never happened before. “Um, arr, yes. Waynong. Clarbo Waynong. Um yes, Clarbo Waynong, Your Princessness.”
Waynong stared at her in a way Jak Jinnaka might have found funny if he didn’t have all too clear an idea of what Waynong
was feeling.

That afternoon, King Witerio held a reception for his visiting royal cousin. It was even worse than Jak had anticipated. The
lively torment of Princess Shyf’s inaccessible presence, a scant two meters away, was exquisitely balanced by the dull torment
of going through the same ceremonies that had so bored him before, this time not as a participant but as an observer. While
ceremonial utterances were uttered, gestures gestured, and drinks drunk, Jak had to watch attentively, his face a mask of
rapt fascination. He had plenty of time to watch Shyf obsessively, an experience a bit like eating when you are already full
and a bit like picking a scab.

When the door finally constricted behind Jak and he was at last alone in his quarters, he needed deconditioning, and he ached
and longed to sit dejectedly on the edge of his bed until Princess Shyf came to declare her eternal and exclusive love for
him. With a groan, he made himself raise his left palm to his face, and say to his purse, “We’re going to run through the
deconditioning exercises. When that’s done I want a hot bath (muscle relaxation temperature) strongly scented (my regular
mix). We’re in for a rough one.”